The Genetics Clinic is a collaborative undertaking by researchers from six NIH institutes and the NIH Clinical Center. Consequently, clinic patients constitute a broad spectrum of genetic disease. The patient load during the clinic's tenth year comprised 201 individuals representing some 60 different diagnostic categories. Of these, 79 patients were seen by members of the Clinical Epidemiology Branch (CEB). For our Branch, the Clinic provides a multidisciplinary setting in which to study unusual patients who either have cancer or an increased risk of developing benign or malignant tumors. Patients are ascertained through special referrals from outside physicians and inhouse requests for etiologic consultations. With informed consent, the approach to the patient includes detailed physical examination and, where applicable, epidemiologic studies of the environmental and genetic background and laboratory studies to clarify biologic mechanisms of carcinogenesis.Categories include patients with genetic diseases predisposing to malignancy, patients with birth defects and cancer, and any other families with an excessive occurrence of cancer of any type.